An art world first: art that is born digital, authenticated digital, and sold digital. Cointemporary and ascribe announce partnership.

by ascribe
on April 12, 2015

As an art gallery, Cointemporary has been forging a unique path to raise questions about what an gallery and an exhibition can be. The brainchild of Vienna-based artists Valentin Ruhry and Andy Boot, it has unique characteristics: it’s only online; it only exhibits a single work at a time; that work changes precisely once, every ten days; and you can only buy the work with bitcoin. Cointemporary often features digital art.

We’re proud to announce that Cointemporary and ascribe have partnered. We’ve been working with Valentin & Andy to meet their needs as a unique contemporary gallery. Now, Cointemporary uses ascribe to authenticate the art. This adds value for both artists and collectors. Digital artists can now exhibit their work on Cointemporary, and share to the greater web, without risking loss of ownership control. And, buyers can collect the work knowing they have a cryptographically secure history of ownership — a perfect chain of provenance.

Thanks to this partnership, for the first time ever:

you can collect digitally-authenticated digital art with digital currency

In fact, you can go to cointemporary.com right now and buy your very own edition of Valentin Ruhry’s digital work “The Love I Got” for 0.05 BTC (about 10 EUR). This piece uses a copy of every single time the word “Love” was mentioned in one of Valentin’s emails over the years. The work has a total of 50 editions; every single one is ascribed onto the bitcoin blockchain with a unique cryptographic ID, and an accompanying cryptographic certificate of authenticity (COA). When you buy an edition with bitcoin, Cointemporary will transfer the ownership (copyright rights) to you, and record it for all to see (pseudonomously) on the bitcoin blockchain. As the new proud owner of the work, you have the rights to re-sell the work, as can all future owners. Yes: a secondary market for digital art is now possible.

The art was born digital, it’s being displayed digital, it’s authenticated digital, and it’s being sold digital. We see this as a milestone in the history of art. We believe that the future of digital art is bright, and we’re honored to be a part of it!